Sitting at my daughter’s house yesterday while workmen clattered and banged fitting carpets, I had long chats about this and that with my 18 year old granddaughter. We considered to pros and cons of online education, and how much more you actually learn in a real classroom, not just from the teacher but from other members of the class. One of her chosen sixth form subjects was Politics. She confessed to knowing almost nothing about the subject before she began sixth form. She’s not even sure why she chose it; maybe it was a case of not knowing what else to study. She didn’t even know the name of the prime minister at that point, but she learnt a huge amount, she maintains, from listening to the views and opinions of her classmates. Her grandfather and I certainly noticed a difference in her awareness of the political world! She suddenly grew up and had opinions on something other than stories about vampires, and musical shows.
One of her “influencers”, if we can call them that, was someone she referred to as “Fascist David”. Everyone in the group called him that, in the friendliest possible manner, after he expressed racist, sexist, homophobic views in one of their early lessons. Otherwise, she declared, he’s a nice lad. We speculated on where his views came from. Not from his parents, she said, as they are very lefty, life-long Labour voters. Maybe, we wondered, his views were a kind of rebellion against his parents. It happens. Perhaps his ideas and opinions would change over time. That also happens.
I thought of this as I listened later to the news. They were talking about cricketer Ollie Robinson’ suspension from the Team pending a disciplinary investigation into racist tweets he made 10 year ago when he was more or less the same age as my granddaughters sort of friend, Fascist David. Oliver Dowden, culture secretary, said that Robinson’s tweets were “offensive and wrong” but went on to add: “[they] are also a decade old and written by a teenager. The teenager is now a man and has rightly apologised. The ECB has gone over the top by suspending him and should think again.”
If it had not been possible to tweet his views and he had only muttered it to a friend the remarks would probably have been forgotten. And it’s likely he has learnt to be more tolerant now. We can only hope he has grown up.
Everyone should be careful what they put out on social media. It has a way of coming back and biting you years later.
The Prime Minister, by the way, is reported to support Oliver Dowden’s statement. The cynical bit of me says that he would do that, wouldn’t he! After all if he utterly condemns someone for saying something when he was a teenager, he could find someone else turning round and saying that a man who described muslim women as looking like pillar boxes really should not be our Prime Minister.
Besides, he doesn’t like making possibly unpopular decisions, or even comments, about things. And so, on the question of football supporters booing players taking the knee at the start of a match Boris Johnson has said he wants the “whole country” to get behind the England team but has refused to condemn those who booed the players taking a knee.
It must be very uncomfortable sitting on the fence. That’s all I have to say on the matter.
I scuttled home from my daughter’s to take part in my Italian lesson on zoom. I could have done it at my daughters house but I foresaw lots of interruptions as members of the family arrived home. So I sacrificed the start of the class to travelling. Then I had a bit of a nightmare getting my zoom connection to work properly. Other people faded in and put of my hearing, the screen froze, my voice was described as sounding metallic and broken - imagine an AI voice: I ... AM ... A ...ROBOT! In the end we had to reboot the whole system for the house. Then I had a crystal clear connection and all was well.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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